Book Photos
AS RESEARCH FOR MY BOOK, 500 people responded to a survey I designed to probe people’s concerns about aging. In the photo section of the survey I wanted to answer the $64,000 question: exactly how much older does gray hair make people look, and is it regarded as inherently unattractive? I asked two 30somethings, two 40 somethings and two 50 somethings, two with naturally brown hair, one who’s gray, three who use artificial color – to pose for pictures. I posed too. Then I had the images digitally manipulated, using Photoshop software, to produce 14 images: all seven of us brown-haired and all seven of us gray. Each survey contained randomly selected versions of each of us. In other words, a given survey respondent only saw each of our faces once, either as a brown-haired person or gray-haired. I asked the survey respondents about each of the seven people pictured on their surveys: Would you fix this person up with a friend? And How old do you think this person is?
My assumption going in was that people with gray hair would be deemed less attractive – that is, less likely to be chosen as a fix-up for a friend. And in a section of the survey where I simply asked women if they thought men find women with gray hair less attractive, by a two to one margin the respondents said yes. But the results of the almost-identical-twin photo-test went the other way, completely surprising me. For Barbara, who has a lot of dark hair, the Photo shopped-very-gray hair did indeed maker her perceived as less fix-uppable, and for the fake-gray, 38-year old Emily T., there was a tiny disadvantage. But for the rest of us, four out of six women, there was a modest but consistent advantage in fix-up-ability for the gray-hired versions of ourselves.
And gray hair made only the youngest of the women and the one man – Alison, Emily T. and Tom – appear older than they actually were.
To me the data indicates that when gray hair is age-appropriate (from our 40s onward) we don’t actually fool people about our age when we dye it.
